The First Walmart Experience & The Rope Swing

Woke up ready to attack the day & start our adventure with the rest of the group!

A few 'complications' with last nights falafel and we were good to go.

Final trip to Caffe Moda for breakfast, well Emilys, I had cheesecake again.

Sadly no shitting-homeless man this time

Shame

It was time to meet Griffin, our bus, 2nd home and sauna for the next 3 & half weeks.
He was responsible for any extra sleep we got, the fight over the chargers & the rush to get on first to secure a double seat.
Oh and more importantly to drive us across the US of A!
Everyone got settled and started our first drive of the trip!

We had a quick stop just outside the city to get some great views of the skyline.

Colin however was more interested in what the floor looked like and stole the first fall of the trip, by tripping over a curb; classic but effective.

San Francisco skyline

Next was something i've been most excited to experience; WALMART

You see all these 'Spotted in Walmart' things on Facebook and all the weird and wonderful people who shop there and I wanted to experience it for myself!

We were all split into 3 cooking teams;

I was in team 2 (the best team I might add) with Ellie, Jana, Sarah & Alan.
Although Alan split his time between our group & 'group 4' or just happened to need the restroom at the start of the shop and return as we were finished ;)

We were all given a list of food to get and the super-market sweep challenge began.

Walmart literally has everything, and everything is huge! It was hard to find a small bar of chocolate or bag of crisps (I nearly wrote chips then, what is life!) and here was the birth place of my Chips Ahoy addiction.

Another stop & another supermarket we stocked up on things for lunch. The heat was insane as we got off the bus, bring on the taaaaaan (& sweat)

A long drive later (which actually in hindsight wasn't very long at all in comparison to what was to come) and we reached the coolest farmers market; Denise's Farmers Market. It had all the fresh fruit and veg you could want and loads of samples to try which I took full advantage of,
espesh at the almond butter section!

Im not a sweetcorn kinda gal, don't see the point in it; you eat it and it comes out the other side exactly how it went in.

Kayla showed us to a massive stand full of different flavoured roasted corns so I again embraced YOLO and helped myself to a few samples and they were actually really nice! Bought myself a bag of the sour cream & onion ones and some dried mango slices.
Never actually finished the corn and I'm pretty sure Emily only got rid of her bag in New York ha!

Next stop was Yosemite National Park.

Obviously after about 15 minutes of leaving the farmers market I needed a wee.

The longest 2 hours of my life to hold onto this wee.

Wasn't the only one, a fair few of us were bursting!

The drive into the park however did distract us, had some incredible views and a great taste of what was to come!

Eventually we arrived and a group of us ran to the closest toilet; biggest and best wee of my life, sadly in the smelliest toilet ever!

We got our first glimpse of El Capitan which is huge! Literally; its 3000ft high!

Takes 4-7 days to climb up! Cray

We took a quick stroll through the valley to a great view point of Yosemite falls.

SO much easier than I had expected! Literally like a 5 minute job and boom, sorted.

All set up we threw on our bikinis and headed down to the river with the group for a dip.

It was so cold but so refreshing.

I made a point of not going under because I didn't want to wash my hair to avoid Hagrid-hair coming back.

That soon changed when I spotted a rope swing on the other side of the river.

Me & Joe swam over to check it out; looked strong enough so I made Joe go first to make sure it was safe.

Good attempt by Joe, now was my turn.

Hilarious!

In my head I would just leap of the tree, rope in hand, swing out and perform some amazing tumble into the water.

Nope.

I jumped and some unexpected force (think its called gravity) dragged me straight into the water and under; so much for not getting my hair wet.

Quite possibly the most ungraceful thing i've ever done & made a complete twat out of myself.
A group of kids had been watching and were clearly impressed by our efforts so wanted to try it out for themselves; probably like 7 years old but we judged them harshly.
First attempt, the poor boy fell straight in and instinct hit the Welsh;
Me, Em & Joe in unison:

"Wheeeeeeeeey, dick'ed hahahaha"

Poor kid.

We all had a laugh about it and attempted some group pics in the water which resulted in a fit of giggles because we kept slipping off the rocks and into the seaweed.
Emily kept wrapping her legs around my waist in an attempt not to drown which led to more giggles. Limbs were waving everywhere under the water and you'd have the odd accidental grope of someone whilst trying to grab onto ... water? Makes sense.